These muffins are a fun twist on the usual pumpkin fare. As much as I love baking with pumpkin when fall rolls around, I get a little tired of the usual standbys–pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie, while delicious, are also everywhere. They’ve been done, many times over. These muffins are like a cross between pumpkin muffins and pecan pie. I haven’t had them before and I haven’t made them before. There’s something refreshing about that.

This recipe comes from the Belvedere Plantation. My boyfriend and I went there in November for their Fall Finale Festival, primarily for their corn maze, but it turned out they had much more to offer. Rope swings in the aptly named fun barn. A giant slide. An oversized trampoline called a jumping pillow. And recipes. I left the plantation with straw in my shoes and a free paper booklet of pumpkin recipes in my hand. What more does anyone need?

The next morning I flipped through the recipes, and I stopped when I got to this one. Normally I need visuals to get excited about a recipe, and a cute little stapled-together booklet of recipes printed on festively orange half-sheets of paper contains zero visuals, understandably. But the recipe alone did it for me this time. I saw the ingredients, read the directions, and got where they were going. Pumpkin muffins with a pecan pie-like topping? Yes. Yes. This is a thing I want to make happen. Now. Yes.

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